Familiars in Witchcraft: Supernatural Guardians in the Magical Traditions of the World

By Maja D'Aoust

A comprehensive exploration of familiars and their many forms and powers

• Explores witch’s familiars in folklore, shamanic, and magical traditions around the world, including Africa, India, Scandinavia, ancient Greece, and China

• Explains how familiars are related to shamanic power animals and how the witch draws on her personal sexual energy to give this creature its power

• Examines the familiar in alchemical, Hermetic, and Egyptian magical literature, including instructions for procuring a supernatural assistant

Exploring the history and creation of a “witch’s familiar,” also known as a spirit double or guardian spirit, Maja D’Aoust shows how there is much more to these supernatural servant spirits and guardians than meets the eye. She reveals how witches are not the only ones to lay claim to this magician’s “assistant” and examines how the many forms of witch’s familiars are well known in folklore throughout Europe and America as well as in shamanic and magical traditions around the world, including Africa, India, and China.

The author explains how familiars are connected with shapeshifting and how the classic familiars of medieval witchcraft tradition are related to the power animals and allies of shamanic practices worldwide, including animal guardian spirits of Native American traditions and the daimons of the ancient Greeks and Romans. She examines the fetch spirit, also known as the fylgia in Scandinavian tradition, and how the witch or sorcerer draws on their personal sexual energy to give this creature its power to magnetize and attract what it was sent to retrieve. She looks at incubus, succubus, doubles, doppelgangers, and soul mates, showing how familiars can also adopt human forms and sometimes form romantic or erotic attachments with the witch or shaman.

Reviewing alchemical, Hermetic, and Egyptian magical literature, including the nearly forgotten alchemical works of Anna Kingsford, D’Aoust explores their instructions for procuring the attention of a supernatural assistant as well as an extensive description of the alchemical wedding and how this ritual joins the magician and familiar spirit into a single unified consciousness. Exploring fairy familiars, she reveals how a practitioner can establish a “marriage” with a totemic plant or tree spirit, who, in return, would offer teachings about its medicinal and visionary powers.

Delving deeply into the intimate relations of humanity with the spirit world, D’Aoust shows how forming connections with living forces other than human enables us to move beyond the ego, expand our magical abilities, as well as evolve our conscious awareness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
• Release date: Jul 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781620558478

Maja D'Aoust

Maja D’Aoust, known as the Witch of the Dawn, is a practicing Witch and scholar of alchemy and occult lore. After completing her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, she studied Oriental medicine and acupuncture and later earned her master’s degree in transformational psychology with a focus on shamanism, the I Ching, and ancestors. She is the author of A Witch’s Bestiary: Visions of Supernatural Creatures, co-author of The Secret Source, and creator of a Tarot deck, The White Witch Tarot. She lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

1

The Witch’s Familiar

Same seeks same; we search out the familiar.

JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM, HAUSFRAU

One of the most romantic notions of the poets is the idea of a soul mate. Finding someone in this world who understands us implicitly and will love us forever and ever no matter what is a comforting sentiment. On an inherent soul level that kind of love is something everyone has longed for at some point, mostly when we are feeling isolated and alien, unloved and unwanted.

The soul mate has captured the imagination of countless individuals who pine and long for a relationship of this deep nature at some point during their life. The first to coin this term was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a letter in 1822: "In order not to be miserable, you must have a Soul-mate as well as a House or a Yoke-mate."¹ Here he meant that if all our relations are only mundane we will not be fulfilled to our potential. The soul mate is generally thought to be something deeply connected to you through some magical, fated string of providence in the woven blanket of time and space. When most people think of a soul mate, they think of a person, and more specifically a lover or romantic partner. But what many people feel uncomfortable recognizing is that almost every primitive culture has stories of animal and plant soul mates, or nonhuman spiritual soul mates and counterparts as well as soul mates who are spirits of the dead. These are most widely known as familiar spirits. The soul mate has taken a multitude of forms in ancient versions of this entity and wasn’t nearly as restrictive as our modern conceptions. Many tales of the saints address their forming a special soul mate relationship with a mountain, tree, or even a flower. Some Buddhist scholars have put forth that Siddhartha Buddha formed a spiritual link with the Bodhi Tree he sat under to claim his enlightenment. Some researchers feel it was the tree that instructed him on how to attain his Buddhahood, like a kind of assistant or mentor. The ancient religion of the Celtic Druids held similar beliefs, that trees could educate, inspire, and love humans, and many Native American tribes claim trees as their ancestors, listing them in their family lineages.

The concept of a special bond with an animal or natural thing symbolizes a bond with the world beyond humanity. Cities and geographical features, such as hills and rivers, are said to have familiar spirits, as well as stars and other celestial bodies. Many ancient cultures taught that through the unification of consciousness with animals or other living things in nature, humans enable their consciousness to unite with a larger living force—that of nature itself. When our consciousness unites with this force and we begin to identify with things other than human, our concept of what we are can powerfully grow out of our ego limitations. Imagine if a soul mate who loved you unconditionally could be something other than human. The amazing scientist Nikola Tesla, who never married, claimed that his soul mate was a pigeon whom he fed every day in the park. He loved the bird dearly. A soul mate can also be a spirit or supernatural being, and by relating to and identifying with such a familiar, we can widen our horizons, go beyond our limitations. A type of relationship between human beings and either animal, nature, or supernatural spirits is mentioned at some point in all ancient cultures and is not particular to witches. That this captivating concept of a soul mate, or a higher spirit level of relating, extends so deeply into humanity suggests that it is either a real phenomenon or simply an inherent need within us seeking expression.

What exactly is a familiar spirit, and why is it called familiar?

Witch with familiars

Original art by Maja D’Aoust

It is helpful to examine the etymology of the word familiar. This word comes from the Latin famulus, which is also where we get the word family. The word famulus means servant, or more specifically a female servant who leads a household through her indentured devotion. This definition of family takes on new meaning when we look at the traditional role of the female housewife as bound to her duty. Similar in meaning to the word famulus, the word doula also means female servant, or literally slave, and describes a woman who acts as an assistant or servant to the woman giving birth in the family. Both words have a connotation of devotional servitude, and it is here that we gain insight into the role of the familiar spirit, which is to serve or provide a service to its bonded human. The familiar acts almost like a spiritual midwife for its human counterpart.

The familiar then is a kind of servant to the person with whom it is connected. It is hard not to recognize the hierarchical implications of this idea. The familiar seems more like Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter under this definition. The concept of humans having servants or being assisted by other beings, spirits, and creatures of the Earth is an old one, found in myths and scriptures.

We can certainly see the idea of humans ruling over nature in the Judeo-Christian Bible. Under many interpretations of the creation story it seems that Earth is for humans to rule over. In Genesis, Adam earns the privilege of naming all the things on Earth, and through his ability to name them he gains dominion over them.² Through this dominion, the creatures of the Earth served Adam and Eve. In reality humans use animals as a kind of slave, or servant, all the time—all we need to do is look to the ox pulling a cart for evidence of this. Using animals for work or food is the most common way that humans enslave them for their purposes as servants.

The ancient Egyptians had very sophisticated techniques of animal husbandry.³ The domestication of cattle is personified or symbolized by the gods; for example, Hathor, the Egyptian cow goddess, taught humankind to calm and castrate the wild bull so that people might use its strength to plow the fields. Even the word domestic relates back to the concept of family and home, and the ability to domesticate an animal is really to make them one of us and allow them to enter into our domicile. This is also where we get the word dominate,⁴ an important consideration since if you were to domesticate an animal you would have to find a strategy to ensure that it would not attack you. The process of domesticating a natural creature to serve the family implicates human lordship over the animal.

This is an important point that cannot be understated. If you lose control of your dog and it bites you or someone else, there are terrible consequences. Likewise, if you lose control of your familiar spirit and it goes feral, there can be similar dangers. Keeping trust and control when working with spirits can prevent mutiny. In the tales of King Solomon, for example, he was said to control spirits through the use of his ring—and when he lost that ring, by being tricked by the demon Asmodeus, the spirits with whom he was working attacked him mercilessly.⁵

This would be in keeping with the concept of the familiar as an animal servant; much like Adam domesticated the animals by naming them, the witch gains the servitude of the familiar through a special type of taming bond. In Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Eliade writes, A relation of ‘familiarity’ is established between the shaman and his ‘spirits.’ And in fact, in ethnological literature they are known as ‘familiar,’ ‘helping,’ ‘assistant,’ or ‘guardian’ spirits.⁶

The bond formed between the domesticated spirit and the witch is one of trust. It is a relationship based on an understanding and an exchange of services. Familiar spirits can also be literally family spirits, because they can take the form of dead relatives. Ancestors play a huge role in the identity of many familiar spirits around the globe, and the worship of the dead while keeping relations with them is a highly practiced form of divination. Some of the religious institutions such as Taoism and Hinduism advocate feats of self-domination, such as fasting and abstinence, to attract the more powerful familiars. For when we become rulers and dominators of ourselves, we attract those willing to serve and follow us. Few soldiers would be willing to follow a general into battle who might break down and cry if you stepped on his toe. If you are looking to wrangle a powerful spirit, you would do well to begin a discipline of self-control, just as if you were seeking to raise and rear a child.

THE WITCH’S MARK

To his good friends thus wide I’ ll ope my arms;

And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,

Repast them with my blood.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET

The relationship with the soul mate familiar spirit usually included some type of exchange. Some of the things exchanged between the familiar and its host included food, sex, worship, and actions or deeds carried out at the instruction of the spirit’s influence.

Sometimes meals were left on altars for the spirits of dead ancestors. This custom is a big part of the ritual of the Day of the Dead, which is prevalent throughout Mexico and other parts of South America. If you wanted one of your ancestor spirits to guard you and protect you, the best thing to do was to give it food. Different traditions provided different kinds of food for the spirits. In some places wheat was favored; other areas said that the spirits preferred sweets or alcohol. For millennia the preferred spirit food worldwide was blood. Blood and human sacrifice were thought to attract powerful spirits; spirits fed blood or offered animal or human sacrifices granted more power to the supplicants. Belief in blood offerings turned from the blood of the one calling the spirit to a scapegoat, or stand in, to provide the blood food. Though this may seem like a heathen activity, many scapegoat-type sacrifices were performed in Judaism, and during every communion held in Christian churches the blood of the scapegoat Jesus is offered up in sacrifice. Participation in blood sacrifices is still very widespread in modern cultures and religions, so to view it as some archaic primitive practice is only ignorance of current events. In African cultures, the blood was offered as part of the meal; the people ate the meat, but the blood was reserved for the spirits. Humans were not permitted to consume the blood as it was the food of the gods and so taboo. Jesus stated that by offering his own blood no other blood would be needed to feed the spirits as he was offering the Holy Spirit as a familiar spirit to all through him—a blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifices, according to the story, anyway.

During the American and European witch trials a notion circulated that not only did witches have familiars but also that they fed them their own blood from an odd teat.

In the late 17th century, several hundred people were tried for the crime of practicing witchcraft in Salem Village, Massachusetts. . . . Also used as evidence were skin lesions characteristic of what were termed devil’s marks or witch’s marks. . . . Devil’s marks included a variety of skin lesions described as flat or raised, red, blue, or brown lesions, sometimes with unusual outlines. Witch’s marks were most probably supernumerary nipples. It was believed that familiars (agents of the devil, usually in animal form) would receive sustenance by being suckled.⁷

In England, Elizabeth Sawyer described her witch’s mark in a trial in 1621, saying, it’s a thing like a teat the bigness of the little finger and the length of half a finger which was branched at the top as a teat and it seemed as though one had sucked it.⁸

You would not be mistaken if you notice that this seems rather like a mother breastfeeding a child. In some of the witch trials the witches claimed that their familiar was one of their lost children, either miscarried or stillborn. Somehow this lost family member was reincarnated as an animal who was so familiar to the witch that she recognized the spirit as her lost child.

SUPERPOWERS

According to many traditions, the power of flight extended to all men in the mythical age; all could reach heaven, whether on the wings of a fabulous bird or on the clouds. . . . We have seen that the same magical powers are credited to yogins, fakirs, and alchemists. . . . Among all things that fly the mind [manas] is the swiftest, says the Rig-Veda.

MIRCEA ELIADE, SHAMANISM: ARCHAIC TECHNIQUES OF ECSTASY

One of the most consistent attributes gained from working with a familiar spirit is a superpower. The different types of familiar spirits through the ages gave many different superpowers. Psychic and physical abilities, prophecy, shapeshifting, astral travel, conveyance of wisdom, knowledge, and inventions are among the many abilities given to the human through the agency

Reviews for Familiars in Witchcraft

[Deea WL · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An interesting & informative & well-researched context. I really didn't expect such a wide cultural approach. Touches a variety of history, mythological, and etymology aspects of familiars. The author's explanations clarified to me mythological notions regarding certain well-known words, entities, and this made me review my understanding I was having about them.
I really enjoyed this book, I liked the tone and the pacing.
I highly recommend for a more out of the box view about familiars & for a better understanding about what they can be & their relationships with the humans.